Calling all American expats in Beijing…

One of my students, Courtney from Bennington College in VT, is doing a semester-long ethnographic and anthropological study of the American expatriate community in Beijing.  It’s a part of her senior thesis, and she has been combing the city interviewing Beijing-based American expats.  But we need a few more…

If anybody is interested in helping out an aspiring academic and has the time for a phone, email, or face-to-face interview in the next few weeks, please get in touch with me (jgjenne (at) gmail.com).

Thanks and God bless hot dogs, baseball, and the US of A.

April 30th, 2009

From the department of “Where have I heard this before?”: Ming Dynasty warship sunk off Taiwan

From the SFist blog:

It was called the Princess Taiping and its mission was to complete a round trip journey from Taiwan to prove that Chinese sailors may have reached North America before Columbus. Well, sadly (but also comically), in the waters just off Taiwan, the Princess Taiping was struck by a freighter and sunk just 30 miles from the end of its 14,000 mile journey.

None of the 11-man crew was injured and the other ship barely  registered the collision as anything more than an offshore speed bump…No word on whether the freighter was being skippered by one of Gavin Menzie’s many dedicated detractors.  Conspiracy theories abound.

April 29th, 2009

Side-stepping the past at Oberlin: Memorials, Symbolism, and the Boxer Uprising

The Oberlin Memorial Arch, erected in 1903 to remember 13 missionaries  killed in the Boxer Uprising of 1900, has occasionally sparked controversy and debate at the picturesque and progressive Ohio school.  As part of the graduation processional route, stepping through or around the arch depends on one’s views on the complicated historical symbolism of the campus landmark.   This year however school administrators are side-stepping the issue — literally — by bypassing the arch during the graduation processional.

From Inside Higher Education:

The processional has traditionally run beneath Oberlin’s Memorial Arch, a controversial structure that either symbolizes the sacrifice of missionaries killed in China or the repression wrought by American imperialism, depending on one’s point of view. For those who take the latter position, bypassing the arch — and breaking with the established processional route — has become something of a tradition.

It appears, however, that Oberlin officials are ready to literally sidestep the controversy that the arch provokes on graduation day. Administrators recently decided to change the commencement processional route, bypassing the arch altogether, The Oberlin Review first reported.

The Memorial Arch was erected in 1903 to recognize Oberlin graduates who were killed during the Boxer Rebellion while serving

April 28th, 2009

Column in the Global Times

This week I have a column in the recently unveiled English-language edition of The Global Times.  This is a new gig and we’ll see how it goes.  The first column is my thoughts on Timothy Garton Ash’s recent piece in The Guardian discussing overseas media coverage and China.  My personal take is that quality of coverage ranges wildly and that even though writers should strive for objectiveness, everybody has their own biases and perceptions.  That said, the way the foreign media is presented to Chinese audiences via Anti-CNN or, for that matter, newspapers like the Global Times*, dramatically oversimiplifies the diversity and complexity of the overseas media environment, and tends to subsume criticism of the criticism into paranoid fantasies of anti-China bogeymen.  As I wrote in this week’s article:

There’s a lot of good coverage of China in the foreign media and too much bad coverage of China as well, but the idea that the “Western Media” operates as a giant cabal with the editors and producers of CNN, BBC, New York Times, Der Spiegel, and the Lichtenstein Daily Bugler all gathering once a month in a secret underground bunker listening as a clone of Henry Luce strokes a white

April 23rd, 2009

The Historical Record for April 18, 2009: A tale of two leaders

April 18th marks the beginning of two administrations in Chinese political history.  It was on this date in 1927 that Chiang Kai-shek established his government in Nanjing following the success of the Northern Expedition and a bloody purge of the Communists from the KMT ranks.  32 years later, Liu Shaoqi emerged from the political infighting in the wake of the Peng Dehuai Affair to become president of the People’s Republic of China.  

While neither was very successful in the short-term, their respective political visions would cast long shadows.  

Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government rebuilt urban infrastructure, attempted to impose order where there had been none, and at least tried to lay the foundations for a modern Chinese state upon the ruins of empire.  Whether he was successful or not depends a bit on who you ask and where you decide to set the goal posts.  Some point to the rampant corruption (KMT officials were often so crooked they had to screw their pants on in the morning), incompetent administration, and Chiang’s own Ahab-esque desire to root out political enemies at the expense of other goals.  

Others argue that Chiang’s government never stood a chance.  With a limited economic base, large chunks of territory

April 18th, 2009
 
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